From the author of the critically acclaimed bestseller, Scent of the Missing, comes a heartwarming and inspiring story that shows how dogs can be rescued and can rescue in return. For her first book, Susannah Charleson was praised for her unique insight into the kinship between humans and dogs, as revealed through canine search and rescue. In The Possibility Dogs Charleson chronicles her journey into the world of psychiatric-service and therapy dogs trained to serve the human mind, a journey that began as a personal one. After a particularly grisly search led to a struggle with PTSD, Charleson credits healing to her partnership with search dog Puzzle. Inspired by that experience and having met dogs formally trained to assist in such crises, Charleson learns to identify abandoned dogs with service potential, often plucking them from shelters at the last minute, and to train them for work beside hurting partners, to whom these second-chance dogs bring intelligence, comfort, and hope.

Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search-and-Rescue Dog

After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Susannah Charleson was so impressed by the newspaper photo of an exhausted handler and his search-and-rescue dog that she decided to train a dog of her own. A dog lover and pilot with search experience herself, Charleson got Puzzle, a strong, bright Golden Retriever, who from the start, exhibited a unique aptitude for search-and-rescue work. But the puppy’s willfulness challenged even Susannah, who had raised dogs for years.

Little Boy Blue: A Puppy's Rescue from Death Row and His Owner's Journey for Truth

When journalist Kim Kavin decided that she wanted a puppy, she did what millions of people do every year: clicked on an online photo and submitted an application. She had no idea that the adorable brindle - advertised as healthy and near her home in New Jersey - was actually a last-minute rescue from a gas-chamber shelter in North Carolina. Blue had arrived in the Northeast with at least a dozen other dogs in an RV that is just one among countless transports whose sponsors are dedicating their efforts to saving dogs.

What the Dog Knows: The Science and Wonder of Working Dogs

Cat Warren is a university professor and former journalist with an admittedly odd hobby: She and her German shepherd have spent the last seven years searching for the dead. Solo is a cadaver dog. What started as a way to harness Solo’s unruly energy and enthusiasm soon became a calling that introduced Warren to the hidden and fascinating universe of working dogs, their handlers, and their trainers.

A Dog Named Boo: How One Dog and One Woman Rescued Each Other - And the Lives They Transformed Along the Way

The last thing Lisa Edwards needed was a new dog. But when she came across an abandoned litter on Halloween, her heart went out to the runt who walked into walls and couldn't steady his feet. Lisa - healing from past abuse and battling constant pain from a chronic medical condition - saw a bit of herself in little Boo. And when he snuggled, helpless, against her, she knew he was meant to be hers. The dunce of obedience class with poor eyesight and a clumsy gait, Boo was the least likely of heroes. Yet with his unflappable spirit and boundless love, Boo has changed countless lives through his work as a therapy dog.

Through a Dog's Eyes

Few people are more qualified to speak about the abilities and potential of dogs than Jennifer Arnold, who for the past twenty years has trained service dogs for people with physical disabilities and special needs. Arnold has developed a unique understanding of dogs' capabilities, intelligence, sensitivity, and extra-sensory skills.

The Divinity of Dogs: True Stories of Miracles Inspired by Man's Best Friend

The Divinity of Dogs is about the moments you learn something profound about life from an experience with a dog. Featuring more than 70 stories culled from hundreds of submissions to the author's Web site, these inspiring and heartwarming true stories show where love, tolerance, comfort, compassion, loyalty, joyfulness, and even death have provided experiences that have led to spiritual enlightenment.

Wallace: The Underdog Who Conquered a Sport, Saved a Marriage, and Championed Pit Bulls - One Flying Disc at a Time

Today, Wallace is a champion; but in the summer of 2005, he was living in a shelter, a refugee from a suspicious pit bull-breeding operation. Then Andrew “Roo” Yori entered the picture. A scientist and shelter volunteer, Roo could immediately see that Wallace was something special. While on his honeymoon, Roo learned that Wallace was about to be put down. Roo and his wife franticly fought to keep Wallace alive until they could return home to adopt him - even though they already had two dogs.

Pukka's Promise: The Quest for Longer-Lived Dogs

When Ted Kerasote was ready for a new dog after losing his beloved Merle - who died too soon, as all our dogs do - he knew that he would want to give his puppy Pukka the longest life possible. But how to do that? So much has changed in the way we feed, vaccinate, train, and live with our dogs from even a decade ago. In an adventure that echoes The Omnivore’s Dilemma with a canine spin, Kerasote tackles all those subjects, questioning our conventional wisdom and emerging with vital new information that will surprise even the most knowledgeable dog lovers.

Decoding Your Dog: The Ultimate Experts Explain Common Dog Behaviors and Reveal How to Prevent or Change Unwanted Ones

More than ninety percent of dog owners consider their pets to be members of their family. But often, despite our best intentions, we are letting our dogs down by not giving them the guidance and direction they need. Unwanted behavior is the number-one reason dogs are relinquished to shelters and rescue groups.

Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet

Dogs have been mankind's faithful companions for tens of thousands of years, yet today they are regularly treated as either pack-following wolves or furry humans. The truth is, dogs are neither - and our misunderstanding has put them in serious crisis. What dogs really need is a spokesperson, someone who will assert their specific needs.

Sophie: The Incredible True Story of the Castaway Dog

The story that became a global sensation: Sophie, the Australian cattle dog who was lost at sea and swam six miles through shark-infested waters to a remote island where she survived in the wild for five months.... It was just another day in paradise as Jan and Dave Griffith, along with their blue cattle dog, Sophie, motored out of Mackay Marina for a gorgeous weekend at sea. But when the sky suddenly darkened and the waves turned fierce, the unthinkable happened: Sophie disappeared overboard.

Bandit: The Heart-Warming True Story of One Dog's Rescue from Death Row

Employing a unique combination of psychology, philosophy, sociology, and dog training theory, Vicki Hearne recounts her experiences with Bandit, a dog deemed so dangerous that the state of Connecticut condemned him to death. Hearne rescued Bandit and was soon entrenched in a legal battle that extended well beyond his case as she fought to prove that no dog is inherently vicious. She quickly discovered the factors that contributed to Bandit’s behavior and set about releasing the essentially “good dog”.

For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend

Yes, humans and canines are different species, but current research provides fascinating, irrefutable evidence that what we share with our dogs is greater than how we differ. As behaviorist and zoologist Dr. Patricia McConnell tells us in this remarkable new book about emotions in dogs and in people, more and more scientists accept the premise that dogs have rich emotional lives, exhibiting a wide range of feelings, including fear, anger, surprise, sadness, and love.

The Second Chance Dog: A Love Story

In 2007, a few years after purchasing Bedlam Farm in upstate New York, Jon Katz met Maria Wulf, a quiet, sensitive artist hoping to rekindle her creative spark. Jon, like her, was introspective yet restless, a writer struggling to find his purpose. He felt a connection with her immediately, but a formidable obstacle stood in the way: Maria' s dog, Frieda. A rottweiler-shepherd mix who had been abandoned by her previous owner in the Adirondacks, where she lived in the wild for several years, Frieda was ferociously protective and barely tamed.

In a Dog's Heart: What Our Dogs Need, Want, and Deserve--and the Gifts We Can Expect in Return

Jennifer Arnold has a unique and profound understanding of the human-dog bond. Though it may seem simple and instinctive, the friendship and devotion we share with our pets is a wondrous evolutionary development. Our two species have come to rely on each - other for protection, companionship, comfort, and happiness - needs and benefits that go both ways. As the founder of Canine Assistants, Arnold has implemented and advanced a methodology that pairs scientific and behavioral knowledge about dogs with gentle incentive and encouragement to extraordinary effect.

The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick’s Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption

Animal lovers and sports fans were shocked when the story broke about NFL player Michael Vick’s brutal dogfighting operation. But what became of the dozens of dogs who survived? As acclaimed writer Jim Gorant discovered, their story is the truly newsworthy aspect of this case.

Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship with Cats and Dogs

In this fascinating exploration of the changing status of dogs and cats in society, pet lover and award-winning journalist David Grimm explores the rich and surprising history of our favorite companion animals. He treks the long and often torturous path from their wild origins to their dark days in the middle ages to their current standing as the most valued animals on Earth. For pet lovers or anyone interested in how we decide who gets to be a “person” in today’s world, Citizen Canine is a must-have. It is a pet tale like no other.

Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words

Chaser has a way with words. She knows over a thousand of them—more than any other animal of any species except humans. In addition to common nouns like house, ball, and tree, she has memorized the names of more than one thousand toys and can retrieve any of them on command. Based on that learning, she and her owner and trainer, retired psychologist John Pilley, have moved on to further impressive feats, demonstrating her ability to understand sentences with multiple elements of grammar and to learn new behaviors by imitation.

Giant George: Life with the World's Biggest Dog

With his big blue eyes and soulful expression, George was the irresistible runt of the litter. But Dave and Christie Nasser's "baby" ended up being almost five feet tall, seven feet long, and 245 pounds. Eager to play, and boisterous to the point of causing chaos, this big Great Dane was scared of water, scared of dogs a fraction of his size, and, most of all, scared of being alone. Giant George is the charming story of how this precocious puppy won Dave and Christie's hearts and along the way became a doggie superstar.

One Good Dog

Adam March is a self-made “Master of the Universe.” He has it all: the beautiful wife, the high-powered job, the glittering circle of friends. But there is a price to be paid for all these trappings, and the pressure is mounting—until the day Adam makes a fatal mistake. His assistant leaves him a message with three words: your sister called.

Team Dog: How to Train Your Dog - the Navy SEAL Way

In Team Dog, Mike taps into fifteen years' worth of experience and shares, in accessible and direct language, the science behind the importance of gaining a dog's trust. He also offers invaluable steps for achieving any level of obedience. His unique approach incorporates entertaining examples and anecdotes from his work with dogs on and off the battlefield and tips from the Navy SEAL guidebook.

Soul of a Dog

With its endearing blend of humor, wisdom, and insight, Soul of a Dog, by New York Times best-selling author Jon Katz, illuminates the interaction between humans and animals.

Although he features his ever-faithful border collie, Rose, Katz also includes revealing observations about Mother the murderous barn cat, Elvis the doughnut-loving steer, and his other dogs - Izzy, Lenore, and Pearl.

Navy SEAL Dogs: My Tale of Training Canines for Combat

The Navy SEAL teams' elite K9 warriors do it all - from detecting explosives to eliminating the bad guys. These powerful dogs are also some of the smartest and most highly skilled working animals on the planet. Mike Ritland's job is to train them. This is the tale of how Ritland discovered his passion and grew up to train these elite dogs. After becoming a SEAL, he was on combat deployment in Iraq when he saw a military working dog in action, and he instantly knew he'd found his true calling.

Ricochet: Riding a Wave of Hope with the Dog Who Inspires Millions

Ride the wave of hope with Ricochet - the only dog in the world who surfs with wounded warriors, people with disabilities, and children with special needs as an assistive aid and SURFice dog. This tears-to-triumph story takes listeners behind the TV and video sensation and shares the true journey that went from promise to disappointment before ultimately finding life's purpose. The gorgeous golden retriever Ricochet seemed destined to be a service dog from the moment she was born.

Publisher's Summary

From the author of the critically acclaimed bestseller, Scent of the Missing, comes a heartwarming and inspiring story that shows how dogs can be rescued and can rescue in return.

For her first book, Susannah Charleson was praised for her unique insight into the kinship between humans and dogs, as revealed through canine search and rescue. In The Possibility Dogs Charleson chronicles her journey into the world of psychiatric-service and therapy dogs trained to serve the human mind, a journey that began as a personal one. After a particularly grisly search led to a struggle with PTSD, Charleson credits healing to her partnership with search dog Puzzle. Inspired by that experience and having met dogs formally trained to assist in such crises, Charleson learns to identify abandoned dogs with service potential, often plucking them from shelters at the last minute, and to train them for work beside hurting partners, to whom these second-chance dogs bring intelligence, comfort, and hope.

From black Lab puppy Merlin, once cast away in a garbage bag, who stabilizes his partner’s panic attacks to Ollie, the blind and deaf terrier who soothes anxious children, to Jake Piper, the starving pit bull mix who goes from abandoned to irreplaceable, The Possibility Dogs illuminates a whole new world of canine potential.

For all the efforts my friends and I put into pulling dogs and cats from kill shelters, rounding up foster homes, and lobbying for laws mandating humane treatment and spay/neuter, none of that may be as effective at making the case to stop the mass killing of dogs as this book. With a calm and persuasive authorial voice, Susannah Charleson clearly shows with personal examples what a mostly untapped resource is sitting in our pounds and shelters. This book is an entertaining and poignant presentation of some of the ways that dogs can be utilized and trained as human assistants (for both physical and psychological disabilities) and clearly shows that our years of breeding dogs to work for us and with us has resulted in many animals with a proclivity to learn and assist - it's not a breed specific characteristic. I absolutely loved Susannah Charleson writing in both this book and her first book, Scent of the Missing, but I did not think her narration with this second book was as good as the first. For some reason, she has adopted the style of some professional narrators of kind of "tailing off" (no pun intended) her voice at the end of some phrases which can make it a little hard to hear especially with background noise (like in the car). However, I still highly recommend this very engaging audio book to anyone who cares about dogs or is interested in the types of therapies (and they are now MANY) in which dogs can assist (and potentially be trained by their owners).

I only give low performance marks if something about the performance makes it hard for me to enjoy the book. I actually like Charleson's voice, a dramatic whisper, and it is great for dramatic and serious moments. But she talks like that all the time even when describing at length how dogs receive a treat. But the real reason for the low mark is that the whispering made it hard to hear when listening in the car on my GPS.That aside I did like the book, and I am a cat person rather than a dog person, but the stories of the dogs in this book were very moving. Also liked the educational aspects of the rules for service dogs and the different tasks they do and how they are trained. I was hoping we might get some details about how a service dog is used for a child with autism but we didn't, but that is just because I am an autism mom so I would have found that interesting. Mostly, we see a lot of OCD. The book did drag a little at points though. I was pleased we didn't go into detail on any animal cruelty. I liked how Charleson brought us up to date on various characters at the end. Good wrap up.

What do you get when you take into your heart and into your home a dog that doesn't stand a chance? Devotion, Loyalty. Love without end.And with service dogs, a chance to live a normal life.So many of us take life for granted, living with occasional compulsions, flare ups of anxiety and fears, every now and then feeling disoriented, but there are those amongst us who are absolutely debilitated by these things. This is old news by now, but this book makes it real, yet again, gives us names, faces, emotions that are touching, and we wind up rooting for people who open their hearts and put their fates in the paws of the service dogs who save them. But really. What I like about this book is that it's such a chicken and the egg deal. Somebody saves the dog? The dog saves somebody else? That somebody continues to care for the dog? The dog continues to care for the person? Where does it begin, where does it end?It doesn't matter, because it's wonderful, and so filled with hard work, faith, and hope that you wind up thinking about it long after your reading/listening time is over.My only advice is to listen to it at x1.25 if you find Charleson's narration to drag. Even then, it's kind of slow going. Still, I enjoyed the emotion in her voice, and the tone, just too many pauses for my taste.Wonderful book, great epilogue. Bravo to animal rescue and trainers!

The dogs were cared for as individuals whether they were appropriate for this type of trianing or not.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

no

Any additional comments?

This is more educational than entertaining, It presents a whole new area of service dogs are able to provide. A breakthrough for people with emotional and other health problems. Although some of this type of service exists, it's not known or used nearly as much as it could be.

I enjoyed this book immensely! As a service dog handler myself, I can relate to much of the training exercises, and was even given little tips on how to work on unwanted behaviors in my own service dog partner.

I learned a lot about ESAs and psychiatric service dogs, owner training, and many other tidbits that I'd never even considered.

Which scene was your favorite?

I cried during some of the scenes where dogs are deemed unadoptable. It is so sad! Some of the reasons were tragic, others horrifying.I loved the training with Jake Piper... he reminds me a lot of my service dog partner.

Any additional comments?

I agree with another review that the breathless narration is annoying on occasion. If Scent of the Missing is a better performance, then I look forward to it!

This was an extremely interesting book for me. The book begins by talking about attitudes towards psychiatric service dogs and service dogs for those with "invisible" disabilities. Since I work in the field of civil rights, including those with disabilities, I see this in my work and I absolutely get the difficulties these individuals face on a daily basis.

The author has developed her own foundation called Possibility Dogs, Inc., which I didn't realize until the end of the book. It is mentioned in the afterward and is not the focus of the book. What a great idea; this foundation helps to support those with service dogs in any way they can. The author tells her story in between stories about others who have the need of service dogs and the dogs themselves. I loved each and every story and there was never a time in this book when I was bored or felt my attention wander.

I could particularly relate to the story of Ollie T., an elderly blind dog who was left in a shelter. I have a 17 yr old blind and partially deaf shih-Tzu and this hit such an emotional chord with me. She is doing well in every other way, but I see her struggle with her lack of sight in familiar surroundings. I cannot even imagine having her face life in a shelter or other unfamiliar environment as a blind senior. My heart definitely went out to Ollie and I am so happy that he ended up with Susannah.

I listened to this on audio, and I am normally not a fan of author's reading their own books. There are exceptions, and I am happy to say that this is one of them. I enjoyed the narration, particularly as her empathy towards both the humans and the animals that she discusses came through loud and clear. I also have to say that one of the Goodreads groups that I belong to is reading this book this month, and the author has been participating in our discussions; this further humanizes the reading/listening experience. I definitely plan on reading her first book, Scent of the Missing, and hope to read future books by her!

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